I've a 40gig IBM Deathstar with firmware ER40A46A. IBM's updater has firmware ER40A45A and says the drive doesn't need updated.

Is there any newer firmware? I quit using this drive a while ago, it was a replacement for a same model one that died horribly with all bits onboard, yet every time I ran DFT and wiped it, it passed as 100% *perfect*. ( IBM)

A few days ago I got another SATA to IDE adaptor (my board has two IDE ports with 2 HDs and 2 burners, and 4 SATA ports with 1 IDE HD), jacked in the Deathstar and moved a big load of stuff to it.

All was well with the drive standing on end on the desk for days. Mounted it in the case, closed it up and about 3 hours later I heard this little mouse-like *squeek* and some clicking. I quickly reached around back and yanked the power cord. When I took the drive out it was nearly too hot to touch, in spite of the large amount of ventilation in the 12-bay giant case. After letting it cool down I connected it up to another PC and it took at least 8 hours to copy 14gigs of files. Only one file I couldn't copy, naturally the biggest file on the disk, which is a multi-gig uncompressed AVI video. The drive now makes this low hum it didn't before. At least it's not the ear-piercing yet very qu1et whine some drives make when they're about to die.